Flower of the Season 2025: Sky. It's! (celestial bodies in the mouth)

Body Weather Laboratory presents

Flower of the Season 2025

A Dance + Music Composition in 9 Movements.

Featuring:

Friday, September 19, 8:00 PM

Saturday, September 20, 8:00 PM

Sunday, September 21, 3:00 PM

Structural and Composed Improvisations

In this performance’s creative process, dance and music develop in response to nine prepared images, titles, or concepts. The process is a collaborative scooping up and sifting through spontaneously arising and unexpected ideas, calls and responses: structured, composed improvisation.

Four dancers, four native tongues—Chinese, English, Spanish, and Japanese—meet in a shared space of music, movement, and image, discovering meaning in fleeting sparks.

Artist’s Biographies

Alex Cline, A native of Los Angeles, drummer-percussionist-composer Alex Cline has been a mainstay on the creative music scene in that city for almost fifty years while his reputation as a musician has been international in magnitude. Known for his contributions to the music of such artists as Julius Hemphill, Vinny Golia, Richard Grossman, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Henry Grimes, Don Preston, Joseph Jarman, Tim Berne, Arthur Blythe, Jeff Gauthier, Horace Tapscott, David Binney, Joshua White, Charlie Haden, Hafez Modirzadeh, and his twin brother Nels Cline, to name but a few off the massive list, he has also worked for many years as a bandleader-composer, having released eight albums under his own name as well as many more from collaborative improvisational projects (on the ECM, 9 Winds, and Cryptogramophone labels). Among the many dance artists with whom Cline’s music has been heard are Oguri/Roxanne Steinberg/Lightning Shadow, Margaret Schuette, the Momentum Company, and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. A member of Will Salmon’s multimedia performance ensemble Open Gate Theatre for forty years, he also curated the monthly Sunday evening concerts series of adventurous music for that entity for twenty-two years.

Jie Ma, also known as Miss Ma, is an international improvisational artist and virtuoso soloist whose mastery of traditional Chinese instruments transcends form. In her hands, the pipa, ruan, and other voices—ancient or modern—speak again, echoing the beauty of nature, the depth of the human spirit, and the sacred interrelationship between life and the divine. Born in China and rooted in the United States for over two decades, Miss Ma composes a living sonic language—shaped by classical Chinese cultural discipline, global improvisational fluency, and otherworldly creativity. Her artistry flows from symphonic concertos to jazz ensembles, from experimental electronic collaborations to meditative rituals and sacred healing spaces. Her overtone singing shimmers with spectral resonance—a haunting, multidimensional voice that seems to echo from both the Earth’s core and the cosmos, always infused with the human touch and connection. A bridge between ancient and modern, East and West, the familiar and the unknown—Jie Ma is not merely a performer; she is a vessel. Her music arises from breath, space, and emotion—distilled from the deep fusion of millennia. She does not perform for you—she travels with you. Through her, music becomes healing. Improvisation becomes communion. And every note becomes a fleeting, sacred wonder."

Aaron Shaw, Composer, Saxophonist, Flautist, and Arranger. Multi-disciplinary genre-less artist. As an active member in the music scene in LA, Aaron has had the privilege of working with several top tier artist like Elijah Blake, Anderson Paak., Dave Chappelle, Herbie

Hancock, Donald Dean, Henry Franklin, Martin Luther, Mary J. Blige, Usher, Shawn Mendes + many others. Not only has Aaron had the privilege and trust from these artists, but he has also appeared and worked on music for Television and Film for companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Nike, The Participant and others. In addition to his extensive collaborations, he has had many experiences playing in the pit orchestras for musicals such as Lion King, Mulan, The Wiz, Dream Girls, and Copacabana.

Andrés Corchero, dancer, Born in Puertollano (Ciudad Real) in 1957. Living in Catalonia since 1962, Andrés Corchero is a passionate and tireless explorer of the languages of the body and dance. Honesty, risk and sensitivity are some of the qualities of his work. His performances explore intimacy, with elegance and emotion. In 1985, he discovered Butoh dance. He went to Tokyo where he studied and worked with Kazuo Ohno and Min Tanaka, two world-renowned masters. From 1986 to 1995, he danced with Maï-Juku, the dance company directed by Min Tanaka. For more than thirty-five years, he has alternated stage creation, teaching and pedagogy. He worked, among others, with poets like Feliu Formosa and Antonio Gamoneda. With Agustí Fernández and Joan Saura, two important figures in the world of musical improvisation. With singers like Miguel Poveda and Silvia Pérez Cruz and with the choreographers Rosa Muñoz, with whom he founded the Raravis company. He also worked with María Muñoz and Pep Ramis from Mal Pelo, Angels Margarit, Hisako Horikawa, Christine Quoiraud and Oguri.

Mao (b. 1995) is a movement-based artist from China, currently based in Los Angeles. Her work explores the body through time, ennui, deception, and the unfinished, using movement, text, and found objects shaped by absurdity and humor. Her work has been presented across the US, China, France, Mexico and Japan. Mao holds a BFA in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Roxanne Steinberg dances to transcend familiar vocabularies and bring about a heightened sense of perception, connectivity, and flow of primordial associations. A graduate of Bennington College, she has taught Body Weather Laboratory since 1988. She performs worldwide as a soloist and with her partner Oguri, sister Morleigh Steinberg, and composers Yas-Kaz, Paul Chavez, Kenta Nagai, Tatsuya Nakatani, Leon Mobley, Myra Melford, Alex Cline, Pheeroan Aklaff, Motoko Honda, Will Salmon. She has worked with dancers Min Tanaka and Amagatsu of Sankai Juku, and artists Hirokazu Kosaka, Carole Kim and Bill Viola. Roxanne has taught at UCLA, Cal Arts, Cal State Los Angeles, Sci Arc, Pomona College, and Harvard Westlake, among others. She is artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice. She is a 2020 DCA COLA Fellow.

Oguri, dancer choreographer, Resident of Venice, California, since 1991, formed Body Weather Laboratory Los Angeles with Roxanne Steinberg. For over 30 years Oguri has been creating, teaching, and producing dance and multi-media works incorporating his own large-scale set/sculpture installations in formal theater settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He continues to investigate the relationship of dance to environment and the boundaries between performer and audience. He has developed collaborative projects with musicians, sculptors, painters, and poets, using literature, imagery, and materials to transform space and change the sense of time with dance. He actively seeks to brings dance to diverse audiences in his local community and beyond. In 2011 Oguri formed ARCANE Collective with Morleigh Steinberg, for touring live performance. Oguri has received numerous grants and awards regional, nation and worldwide, 2018 United State Artist Doris Duke Fellow, among others.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue, Los Angeles, United States